


Release

by recrudescence



Category: Les Miserables
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossdressing, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-18
Updated: 2006-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For anyone who's ever wondered just who the hell Éponine switched clothes with before going to the barricades. (Hugo could've easily wrung a chapter or two out of the intrepid cross-dressing young things of 1832, seriously.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Release

It was impossible, especially at a time like this. Having spent the past several hours dedicated to locating Marius and avoiding anyone else, Éponine was still reeling from the turnaround.

She ought to have thought this through a little earlier, when it was still possible to catch one of her father’s accomplices and somehow beg a favor. Everyone was already lying low for the day, waiting for the true fruits of the imminent carnage. Not everybody rushing to the barricades intended to fight there. For that matter, not everybody rushing to the barricades was allowed to _be_ there. She had her own doubts about just how much of a people’s liberation this could truly be called if half the population was being impatiently batted aside for its own safety, but that did nothing to change the reality of the situation.

At first, she had considered giving up entirely and foraging on her own. It had seemed simple enough, with so much of the city already in a collective state of disarray: doors open, windows cracked, half of Paris intent on fleeing the scene and the other half intent on bracing itself from it. Clumsily and desperately, she had seized a vest through one shattered shopfront and been slapped for it until she relinquished her hold and darted out of sight. Still she searched, tearing through the city with her feet slapping the paving stones and her breath roaring in her ears. The streets were awash with sound, footfalls and shouts thundering from every direction, but Éponine found him somehow: a boy the gamins laughed at, always behind his back, who Montparnasse worked with sometimes because he was a brilliant thief.

He shook her off immediately when she grabbed hold of his sleeve before he could disappear into the throng. When she blurted out her predicament, he only grimaced and started to turn away until she called after him, not caring how shameless she might sound, “What, Camille, not even for a kiss?”

He shifted to face her then, eyebrows lifted, mouth wry, and beckoned her into an alley with one long-fingered hand.

Camille never touched her, of course, just impatiently snorted, “All right, then. Give it over.”

Éponine noticed him scornfully surveying her shredded shift as she whipped it over her head and thrust it in his direction, but was too busy sending up a prayer of thanks he hadn’t dressed for evening to care. She had known it was a faint possibility, although anyone wanting to close in on the _émeute_ —whatever their motive—had a far better chance at success if they at least resembled a man. Camille was in trousers, looking no different than any other slightly built workingman, ready for day labor he had obviously not been doing. Factory jobs were unlikely to prove the most lucrative today, and anyone who made a habit of painting crockery by day and their face by night needed to be canny in measuring the precedence of each.

She dressed as fast as she could, pausing just once to cough and spit over her shoulder into the shadows. The belt slapped into her hand and Éponine hastily cinched it in place.

Across from her, Camille was loosening his hair, muttering fretfully all the while. “Good God, this is awful.”

There wasn’t a single argument she could make against that even if she wanted to. “I know, Camille.”

Her only response was some garbled grumbling as Camille tilted his head downward and combed a few strands over his forehead.

“You,” he announced, straightening up, “are damned lucky Paris is going to be full of scrappy hussies sobbing for their men today, else there’d be no deal at all.”

“Damned lucky, right,” Éponine agreed blandly. “You ought to blend in perfectly.”

Camille somehow managed to simultaneously curse under his breath, finish knotting a kerchief into place, and nibble his lips to make them redder. “Also,” he added once he had completed all three to his satisfaction, “there’s no way in hell you’ll have my boots.”

Éponine had expected as much. “Fine by me. ’Parnasse will know where the rest came from. Tell the bastard it’s a present from me.” Bravado and adrenaline had made her haughty.

She had seen them once, together, in some shanty they had used for hiding. Camille had been in full nighttime regalia then, Montparnasse had been hatless and coatless. Heads close, lips pressed together, which had surprised her. Montparnasse never went in for that sort of thing, always sneering at the idea. Then he had seized a handful of the boy’s hair, forced him around with a hiss of skirts swishing along the grimy floor, and drawn him close, teeth digging into his neck. Éponine had fallen back a bit, satisfied. This, at least, was the Montparnasse she knew. Brujon had whistled outside in the street then and she had scurried off for the night before anyone missed her.

All that was through now. She flew back into the streets for herself this time, swallowed rapidly by the swelling crowd, scraping her feet on glass and gravel, once or twice swiping an arm down to pull her nonexistent skirt out of the way.

She supposed Camille stepped into the fray as well, but never looked back to see. She had what mattered, let Montparnasse have him. Éponine only thought of Marius and ran faster, riding high on the precarious tide of possibility, certain something would happen but not caring what. She was anticipating too much to care and dead too soon to know.

The _émeute_ raged on.

Thénardier roamed the sewers, Claquesous disappeared, and Marius lived to acknowledge another rescue that upstaged the previous one. Camille made the rounds as a grief-stricken sister, wailing his way past all opposition in order to lay claim to the poor dead brother’s body and everything on it.

When they met later, Camille did not deliver Éponine’s message, and when Montparnasse saw his attire he only laughed and ordered him to take it off.

A matter of precedence again, as always.

 

 


End file.
